


When No One is Looking

by mldrgrl



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Frustration, Lite romance, Moodiness, lite fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 17:04:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14477277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mldrgrl/pseuds/mldrgrl
Summary: There is no real plot here, just a slice of time set in season 7.  It's a mood piece with a lot of moods and moodiness within.  Rated teen for some language and gruesome imagery.





	When No One is Looking

Dry heat; dry, dusty, desert heat, might just possible be the worst, Scully thinks.  Dry, dusty, desert heat in the middle of August in the middle of fucking nowhere, Arizona, in particular.  It may be as close to Hell as one could possibly get without dying.

 

She stands at the edge of the parking lot of the motel she and Mulder have been installed in for the last four days and raises a hand up to shield her eyes as she takes in the landscape.  It seems as though there is nothing for miles. Nothing but sagebrush and cacti and dirt and rocks and heat vapors. In the distance, there are brown, featureless hills, so far away they look like nothing but blurry slashes across the horizon. 

 

For the most part, the sky is still bright and blue, but up ahead where the hills are, a mass of ominous grey clouds hangs suspended, like it was placed there by accident.  She’s sure it’s a rather large and impressive storm cloud, but from where she’s standing, she can see it end to end. It must be headed their way, because she can suddenly smell the earthy scent of rain.

 

She’s surprised that she’s been able to contemplate the view for the better part of ten minutes without interruption.  If there’s anything that can be more smothering than desert heat, it’s her partner, but Mulder simply gave her a nod when she left him at the car and said she wanted to take a walk, and let her go.  Perhaps if she takes a glance over her shoulder, she’ll find him leaning against their rented maroon Taurus spitting sunflower seed husks on the ground and watching her. She does take a glance, but he’s not there, but that just means that if he hasn’t come looking for her by now, he’s probably kept an eye on her from the motel window, and the thought of that makes the air feel every drier and hotter.  

 

Annoyed, she unbuttons her short-sleeved, baby blue blouse to expose the white tank top underneath.  It feels wholly unprofessional, but if Mulder can get away with leaving his suit jackets hanging in the motel closet, rolling up his shirtsleeves, and unknotting his tie for the past four days, she can unbutton her blouse.  Besides, Agent Scully is on a break. 

 

A swift wind kicks up from nowhere.  It rattles the sagebrush and speckles her chest and face with dirt.  She spits the grit out of her mouth and blinks it free from her eyes.  It’s a rude reminder that the desert is as harsh and unforgiving as it is secretive.  She hates it and she hates this case.

 

Done with the time alone she thought she wanted, all she wants now is a shower.  Her face pinches up with disdain when she turns back to the motel. It was dark when they’d first arrived and her first impression was of a flickering neon pink M and a burned out T so that the sign on the road flashed MO EL or O EL depending on when she blinked.  It’s nothing to look at now, just a flat strip of rooms with a crumbling and dirt-caked adobe facade, but it’s got that classic Americana postcard look that induces nostalgia for simpler times. The parking lot is mostly empty save for the Taurus and a dusty Buick that might be green or might be blue, it’s hard to tell, but she stops for just a moment and tries to imagine it full of colorful Chevy Bel Airs and Studebakers.

 

The brief daydream offers little respite from the past four days and she brings herself back to reality with the reminder that simpler times never really existed in the first place and that it’s all just perspective.  They have been working on a series of murders that press refers to as The Desert Flowers, but still there are murders more brutal and more notorious of the past; The Black Dahlia, The Wineville Chicken Coop Murders, The Boy in the Box, The Clutter Family, Julius Fucking Cesar.  There is no such thing as a simple time.

 

Thankfully, despite the lackluster exterior of the motel, the room is clean and reasonably comfortable.  More importantly, the air conditioner works. It’s already cranked up when she opens her door, which tells her Mulder has been there.  The connecting doors to their rooms stand open and she can hear his TV, what sounds like a baseball game, over the hum and rattle of the air conditioner.  She turns it down a few notches before she gathers her things and heads for the shower.

 

She lets her dusty clothes fall into a puddle on the bathroom floor as she scrutinizes her face in the harsh fluorescent light.  Her cheeks and nose are red with sunburn and it looks as though her forehead may have suffered today as well. She’ll need to be more diligent with the sunscreen tomorrow.

 

Another thing she can be thankful for is that the water pressure in the shower is decent.  They’ve been in worse places, where the water spits out in weak intervals or just dribbles lazily out of the showerhead, but the spray is functional here and runs clear.  She adjusts the taps to a comfortably tepid temperature, somewhere bordering both cool and warm, and steps in. It’s still a contrast to her overheated skin and she breaks out in a shock of gooseflesh that settles almost immediately.  She feels layered in grime and sweat and like she’ll never be able to scrub hard enough to make it go away, but she tries anyway, working the complimentary bar of soap down to a sliver as she lathers her arms and legs and neck and chest and belly and hips and thighs.

 

There’s a soft tap on the bathroom door and then Mulder calls her name.  Not now, she thinks. I can not possibly do another autopsy or walk a crime scene or interview a witness.  I just can’t.

 

“What?” she calls.

 

“Wanna conserve water?” he asks, sliding the shower curtain back a little and stepping inside before she can accept or reject.

 

She’s got her face up to the spray so her back is to him and her eyes are closed.  “You shouldn’t be in here,” she says.

 

“Well, you know me, I’ve never met a rule I couldn’t break.”

 

She acknowledges the truth of it with a hum.  His hands find her shoulders and squeeze lightly and she hums again, dropping her head forward a little.  His thumbs sweep down along the sloping wings of her shoulder blades and then back up again, moving over each other up her spinal column to the base of her neck.  He presses down behind her ears and squeezes her shoulders again a little harder.

 

“That’s nice,” she murmurs.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“But, you don’t have to.”

 

He does anyway, massaging her neck and shoulders lightly as she rolls her head under the water.  His hands are warm, and they’re always warm, but in contrast with the cool water, they feel even warmer than usual.  It’s both pleasurable and relaxing. She picks her head up and tilts it back, lifting her hands up to push her hair back from her face.

 

“You okay?” he asks.

 

“Mmhm.”

 

“It’s been a rough couple of days.”

 

She inadvertently shrugs Mulder’s hands off her shoulders to half-heartedly disagree.  He drops them to her waist and squeezes her hips. She steps back against him and he folds one arm up across her chest to her shoulder and the other down across her belly to her hip.  He leans down and rests his chin against her temple.

 

She shuts her eyes and it’s just the sound of the shower for awhile and the feeling of his chest expanding and contracting against her back as he breathes.  Maybe time can be simple if it’s reduced to moments of simplicity like this. They are not FBI agents right now, just two people in a shower, standing quietly under a spray and letting it cool them down after a hot day.  While outside, someone, or some _ thing _ , as Mulder believes, bludgeons young women and leaves their bodies face down in a bed of devil cholla.  Because cracking the back of their skulls was not enough, the killer also needed to make sure the victim came away with a face full of cactus needles to boot.

 

Scully squirms and Mulder loosens his arms so she can turn.  She briefly raises her eyes to his and then butts his chest with her forehead.  He keeps one hand low on her back and moves the other to cup the back of her head.  Water sluices down her cheeks, past her mouth, and bubbles in the hairsbreadth of space between her lips and his sternum as she sighs.

 

“Don’t you ever wish we could just stop this before it starts,” she says.

 

“All the time,” he answers.

 

She folds her arms up and in between her chest and his, hands curled into fists.  She’d like to punch something in frustration, maybe the wall or maybe Mulder. As though he senses it, he takes a step back and takes her wrists, pulling both hands up to his mouth.  He kisses her knuckles and unfurls her fists by sliding his thumbs inside her palms and running them across the bottom of each of her fingers. She flinches a little when he passes over a spot where a cactus needle pierced her hand while she was removing them during an autopsy.  It still stings a little.

 

“I need to wash my hair,” she says.

 

“Want me to do it?”

 

“You want to wash my hair?”  She tips her head back to look up at him.  His mouth is still resting against her knuckles.

 

“I want to if you want me to.”

 

“Alright.”

 

“Really?”

 

“Shampoo is behind you.”

 

He looks almost giddy when he drops her hands and turns to find the travel bottle of shampoo.  After he flips open the cap, he brings it to his nose to take a whiff and then pours a generous amount into his palm.  It’s more than necessary, but she turns around and tips her head back for him and lets him lather her hair. It feels nice to have his fingers massage her scalp, even nicer than when she gets her hair cut at the salon because it’s Mulder and not a stranger hovering above her over a sink.  If this became a regular occurance maybe she wouldn’t feel compelled to have her hair cut so often.

 

“You’re good at this,” she says.

 

“Call me Mulder Sassoon.  If you don’t look good, I don’t look good.  Rinse.”

 

Scully turns with her eyes closed and he washes the soap out of her hair.  She wipes the water from her face when he’s finished and does her own conditioning while Mulder grabs another complimentary soap from the sink to wash up.  He tells her he’ll be out in a few minutes when she finishes and steps out of the shower.

 

She wraps a towel around herself and uses another to rub her head on her way out of the bathroom.  The puddle of clothes on the floor is left behind as well as the fresh pajamas she’d brought to change into.  The room is too cold so she turns the air conditioner down another notch. She pulls the comforter down and slips under the sheets clad in her terrycloth wrap and turban.

 

“It looked like it was going to rain,” she says to Mulder when he comes out of the bathroom a few minutes later.  His hair is wet and there’s a towel wrapped low around his hips.

 

“Oh?”

 

“There were storm clouds out by the hills and I could smell rain in the air.”

 

“Is that what you were doing outside?  Weather forecasting?”

 

“I needed a break.”

 

Mulder climbs into bed behind her and puts his arm around her.  He props himself up on his elbow and leans over to kiss her shoulder.  She hasn’t had to tell him no yet in this new version of their relationship and she doesn’t want to have to, but she isn’t in the mood for this.  His hand works inside the folds of her towel and she holds her breath, but he simply lays down and pulls her close. Her heart actually stutters just a bit and she thinks that maybe she could be in the mood after all if he’s going to be so endearing.

 

“Mulder,” she says, as she turns over to look at him.  His eyes are closed. She stretches up and sniffs his head.  “You used my shampoo.”

 

“Had to.  Mine was too far away.”

 

“Have you slept at all these past four days?”

 

He purses his lips like he’s going to lie to her, but he gives a little shake of his head.  She puts a hand on his cheek and traces the outline of the left side of his mouth with her thumb.  He opens his eyes and shifts a little, bringing his leg over hers and pulling her hips a little closer to him.

 

“What about you?” he asks.

 

“Not much.”

 

“What is it about this case?”

 

“For me or for you?”

 

“For you.”

 

“Your profile.  The killer kills because he hates his victims and because he likes to kill.  Inflicting pain is an instinct for him, something he was meant to do.”

 

“It.   _ It _ instinctively kills.  Killing is what  _ it _ was meant to do.”

 

“You’re really sticking to this skinwalker theory of yours?”

 

“The prints-”

 

“-are from a coyote.”

 

“A single coyote at every crime scene?”

 

“Coincidence.”

 

“And then left the body completely untouched?  Just sniffed around and went on its merry way?”

 

“I can’t tell you much about coyote behavior.”

 

“You don’t need to.”

 

“Mulder, a coyote didn’t kill those girls.”

 

“I agree.  A coyote didn’t.  A skinwalker did. All the evidence-”

 

“What evidence!” she barks.  “There is no fuh…”

 

“There is no fuh?”

 

“There is no fucking evidence,” she whispers.  Her ears burn a little. 

 

“I love it when you get riled up.”  Mulder smiles and reaches up to tap a finger on her bottom lip.  “Throwing out words you can’t say on network TV.”

 

“Shut up, Mulder.”

 

“So saucy.  And it looks like you got a little sunburn.  Does it hurt?”

 

“It’s fine.”

 

“Should we order dinner before the rain starts?”

 

“If I ever look at another slice of pizza it’ll be too soon.”

 

“There’s that diner we pass up the highway.”  Mulder shifts and pushes the sheets off his hip.  “I can-”

 

Scully pulls him back.  “No. Don’t go.”

 

“Stay here with you?” he asks, moving his leg up higher over hers.  She feels his towel fall away from his hips. “Where I’m not supposed to be?”

 

“What would you be doing right now if this didn’t exist?”  She waves her hand between them, from his shoulder to her chest.

 

“I’d probably have pulled the blinds and I’d be lying in the dark listening to the ballgame and brooding.  What would you be doing?”

 

“Poring over autopsy notes hoping to catch something I’d missed.  Have we let the work slip? We said we wouldn’t.”

 

He moves his head closer to hers and peppers her face with kisses as he speaks.  “You’re still shooting down my bullet-proof theories with the same zeal as three months ago, so I’d say we still got it.”

 

“We can’t afford to get distracted.  Not now.”

 

“We’re just taking a break.”

 

She pulls his mouth away from her brow and brings him down for a kiss.  It’s slow and deep and and sensual. Over the soft sound of their lips smacking, the patter of rain begins to fill the room.  Mulder lifts his head and looks over his shoulder at the closed window.

 

“If you want to quit now,” he says.  “You can find work as a meteorologist.”

 

“What would you do?”

 

“Salons always need a good washboy don’t they?”

 

“Oh no, I’m not letting anyone else near those magic fingers of yours.”

 

“Magic fingers?”  Mulder lifts a hand in the air and stares at his fingers as he wiggles them.   “I do believe that is the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

 

Quite quickly, the rainfall becomes louder and more intense.  Mulder turns his head again and they both listen to the downpour.  The room grows dimmer and Scully lifts her eyes up where the shadows of the rain that slides down the window wave across the ceiling.  There’s a light hissing sound outside and she thinks the pavement must be steaming.

 

Scully tugs on Mulder’s shoulder until he turns back towards her and she wiggles down to rest her ear over his heart.  She closes her eyes and counts the beats as he twines his arms and legs around her. She tries to stay in the moment, to clear her mind and appreciate the simple act of listening to her lover’s heartbeat, but all she can think about is the hope that no one else dies tonight.  And how much she hates the fucking desert.

 

The End

 


End file.
